Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Looks like Ontario's Liberal Minister of Disaster, George Smitherman, has cocked-up again, this time on his Liberal government's pledge on nuclear power. Smitherman now wants to slide the responsibility for his Liberal government's glib, unreasonable election promises (lies) onto the federal government! Why should the rest of Canada subsidize Smitherman's grandiose schemes? Daltion McGuinty and his Liberal government have been energy flickup's for years, simply lying their way through two terms of office. What a flicking disgrace.

Take a look just back to Oct. 31, 2008 (see: http://www.thestar.com/article/528385): less than a year ago Smitherman rejected a bid from the private sector to build a nuclear facility at Nanticoke, Ont., where the current coal plant, supposedly scheduled to be closed (!!) is also located.
Smitherman claimed then : "I remain singularly unconvinced that there is the capacity to build new nuclear at Nanticoke while we still have very ambitious plans for a new build at Darlington and tonnes of refurbishment work (at older nuclear facilities)," he said. "We couldn't do it if we wanted to."

Right, Smitty - so were you knowingly lying then, or has your ambitious reasoning (such that it is) changed - now that you AREN'T building the reactors you said you were going to?! Will you allow the Nanticoke plan to be developed?

From being a disaster as a health minister to this, many Ontarians singularly believe that Smitherman is a flicking dangerous Liberal cock-up!

The Toronto Star, Jun.30, 2009, wrote in "Ontario shelves costly nukes" (... as opposed to those inexpensive nukes, eh? Oh, to be a TorStar headline writer!):

"Ontario is backed into a fiscal corner with an $18.5 billion deficit and is hoping the fragility of the minority Conservative government in Ottawa will force the Harper government to be generous with the province."

Yep, even the Star sees it - Liberal Smitherman IS PLAYING POLITICS - GAMBLING - WITH ONTARIO'S ENERGY NEEDS!!

We shouldn't expect anything less from Dalton McGuinty's two-faced Liberal liars and incompetents, from green bolsheviks to 'Evironmental Saints', such as Jim Bradley.
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Monday, June 29, 2009

This afternoon, Jun.29, I listened to American radio broadcaster and lefty windbag Ed Schultz on 1520 AM. Eddy was blabbering about having Democrats ask Republicans to go to Canada on a field trip to examine our health care system. Eddy urged them to go to Winnipeg, or Toronto, to experience our health care Utopia. Sure, they can visit Liberal Ontario, home of the 24 hr. emergency room wait!Oh, while you're here, make sure you get some union tour guides wearing Tommy Douglas T-shirts to show you the sights (like the Soviet tours that George Bernard Shaw - Stalin's bootlick - got!! ("Hey - this is a beautiful country! No one's starving! Hunger? What? What famine... there's no stinkin' famine... just beautiful socialism!!)This nutocrat buffoon’s ignorance seemingly knows no bounds, when he asks 'where are the health care protests?' - apparently he hasn’t heard of Quebec’s Chaoulli decision; and hasn’t the faintest #@* clue about the McCreith/Holmes health care challenge in Ontario. That's how we protest against socialist, state-run, single-payer health care monopolism - at the Supreme Court.It’s apparent this Yank has never read what Dr. Ouellet, head of the Canadian Medical Association, has written about.Hasn't this raging dork heard that even his own president, Democrat Obama, has said he does NOT favour Canada’s failing single-payer health care monopoly as a model template for the States?This divisive demotard has no clue that many Canadians are forced to go TO THE STATES for treatment, because our health care monopoly can’t provide treatment when necessary: it’s all well and good to preach universality, Eddy, but, as it was stated in Quebec's Chaoulli court decision, access to a universal waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care.It's a leftist Utopian fiction, a deceptive con.Americans should take the time to carefully understand the implications of Quebec's Chaoulli court decision as it relates to the false premise of 'single-payer universality', especially when ignorant, regressive agitprop regarding Canada's health care spews from the pieholes of clowns like Ed Schultz.It’s obvious Schultzy hasn’t read Froma Harrop’s writings on Canada’s health monopoly, or David Gratzer’s, for that matter.Obviously, Schultzy couldn’t be bothered to read the health care horror stories, and appreciate the foreshadowing therein, found in Liberal Healthcare Duplicity. (see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)Schultz, foaming at the mouth about Big Pharma, doesn't seem to even know what a health monopoly is. Idiot-savant rhetorician Schultzy moronically asked ‘what’s wrong with the public option of socialized medicine?’ Leftards, get your terms and definitions straight – socialism does NOT give you an “option” – there is no "option" in a single payer monopoly. What "option" are you talking about!?! In Ontario, we have no choice in a single-payer monopoly. Do you not comprehend that?Canada sends heart attack patients, women in labour, infants, cancer patients, burn victims, you name it…all kinds of patients, including emergency patients, are exported to the United States for medical care that our illusory health care system fails to provide here in Canada.Canada is looking to hybrid parallel systems such as those in Europe, where publicly funded and privately-accessible health care co exist. That's your best choice.Only a clueless partisan moron, a sicko Moore -ist , a Schultzopath, would believe that Canada's single-payer monopoly is any answer.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Canadian Press reported in “Parents don't have passports; preemie alone in Buffalo”, (St. Catharines Standard, Jun.27, 2009):“A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N. Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at a local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don't have passports.Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph's Hospital, 14 weeks premature.A province wide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce baby to Buffalo.Her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, couldn't follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States.They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.The Canadian Consulate in Buffalo is providing advice and guidance to the first-time parents, and their local MP, New Democrat David Christopherson, is working to arrange emergency passports.But that will take until at least Monday afternoon and the situation is complicated by the fact the baby's dad has a criminal record."I just want to be with her," said Paquette."She only knows my heartbeat, my voice and her daddy's voice. It's all I can think about. I feel so helpless."
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Another infant sent to Buffalo, because Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s failing single-payer health care system couldn’t provide the necessary health care treatment in Ontario!
Thankfully, the American health care system in Buffalo, N.Y. was there to provide for Canadians when the Canadian health care monopoly failed. When patients needed it, the political rhetoric of socialized health care succumbed to medical reality.
Let’s hear St. Catharines health-care monopolist Jim Bradley explain to the public why his Liberal health care monopoly failed once again.
Let's hear Liberal Jim Bradley, the mealy-mouthed monopolist who loves to disparage the American system, publicly thank the Americans for cleaning up after his Liberal government's messes.
C’mon Jim! Let’s hear you spout some of your political BS… you know… blame Harris… bla blah… slippery slope… blah bla… U.S.-bad, Ontario-good… blah blah…
C'mon, Jim... spin some of your famed rhetoric, you know, about how your Liberal-run, under-funded, monopolist-medicare is working!!
C’mon, Jim... say something! Dump on the American system, the way you like to do, naturally, as a smug Liberal!! Tell us how evil American health care is… while your Liberals export Ontario patients to the States for treatment!
Jim, if you are unable to, or unwilling to, explain your monopoly’s inadequacies, maybe your incompetent cabinet colleague David Caplan, will? Please do so, publicly!
And by all means, let's spin this into a passport issue, rather than examining McGuinty's failing Liberal health care monopoly!
(I've previously written to Bradley regarding his Liberal government's cross-border patient exports, see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/11/will-liberal-transport-minister-jim.html. Bradley refused to respond.)
The stress on parents Paquette and Stinson and their child is solely due to Dalton McGuinty's failing health care monopolism.
Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal gang of 'health care terrorists' rely on utilizing the United States for health services, while preaching of the supposed benefits of so-called universality - ironically, the Liberals export Ontario patients to American health centers which would be illegal if they were located in Ontario!!
This two-faced slimy duplicity by the Liberals isn't new.
Just back in Feb. 2006, a St. Catharines couple, Dave and Mena Coote, also had a similar dilemma thrust upon them when Jim Bradley's Liberal health care monopoly failed to provide the necessary health care as Mrs. Coote went into premature labour with twins.
Astoundingly - THERE WERE NO NEO-NATAL BEDS AVAILABLE IN THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO.The Coote's had to drive themselves from St. Catharines, across the border to Buffalo, to get to Buffalo Women' and Children's Hospital, where their twins were safely born - with American citizenship, to boot.
Jim Bradley was the Liberal MPP in St. Catharines at the time - Jim Bradley never gave an explanation for why his Liberal health monopoly failed.
And, now, its happening again, with Paquette and Stinson's infant being sent to Buffalo for medical treatment which Bradley's Liberal liars couldn't provide in their vaunted utopian Ontario monopoly.
Unfortunately, MPP Jim Bradley's still here - and still hiding from explaining his Liberal's failing health care duplicity.Is anyoneeven asking Bradley for an explanation?!
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[Please note: the words Liberal , McGuinty, or CaplanDO NOT even appear in the Canadian Press article cited above. There are no comments or responses provided from any Ontario Liberal regarding this incident. It's as if this sytemic failure of Liberal health monopolism just happened all on its own!! Why, McGuinty's health care terrorism had no bearing on this incident!]
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See also:

Friday, June 26, 2009

Joy Russell wrote in "Hospital fight far from over",(Niagara This Week, Jun.26, 2009:

"A week has passed , since we were presented with the concessions dealt to the Town of Fort Erie by the “slight of hands” Medicine Show” we know as the LHINs, and the NHS (yes - the old Medicine Show that fooled the public by selling them elixirs or tonics that would give them the “Magic” cure!).Our Medicine Show does not go from Town to Town in a horse drawn wagon to con the inhabitants into believing their lies, it moves, instead like a cancer, eating away until it can be discovered, identified, and eradicated. Simply put, we continue to fight or we die! Not only individually, but as a town!The only parts of the “deal” made by the LHINs, NHS and the Town of Fort Erie that will help us, is that we now have two years to rally our troops to defend our town and its population.Our doctors can admit patients to six active beds and some services are retained. Rather like the narcotic effect the snake oils and old time elixirs gave to the wishful buyers at the Medicine show - lull them into believing.We have learned from the Wild West Days and the settlers who were strong and brave enough to fight for our country and our rights. The Medicine Shows are still here but they are cloaked in different colours and disguises now, as shown by lavish settings, extremely high salaries and puppet helpers. They still prey on those they can fool but we can stand up to them, and we are.The people of Fort Erie are a strong united force and we will not accept anything other than the return of our hospital that was built for the people by the people. We will not give in to the self-serving desires of our government and their appointed, not elected, committees.We are being attacked by terrorists groups formed by our own government, in our own country, by the same people that we trusted and elected into power to work for us.Don’t give up the fight and join our protest. The higher the numbers the louder the voice."

*

It's strange how the words "Liberal", or "Dalton McGuinty", or "Kim Craitor", or "Jim Bradley" don't even appear in this letter by Joy Russell!!

It's as if someone else - not McGuinty's gang of Ontario Liberals - who are the health care terrorists!

It's as if these 'terrorist health care groups' are somehow acting this way independently, all on their own!
It's as if these terrorists elect their own responsible boards, which are accountable to their members!

It's as if these health care terrorists make up their own rules, and are accountable to paying customers!

It's as if these health care terrorists are responding to market demand and customer/patient needs!

WTF, folks!? Oh boy, Joy!

Joy, is it too difficult to comprehend that only Dalton McGuinty's Liberal despots command, control, and fund these 'health care terrorist groups'; that McGuinty and Bradley and David Caplan and the rest of 'em are complicit in leading and directing them?

Stop blaming the LHIN and the NHS for doing what they were forced to do by McGuinty's duplicitous Liberal government.
The Liberals run a secretive, unaccountable health monopoly where patients - and administrators - have no choice but to submit to its statist, single-payer authoritarianism.

But it seems people affected by the Liberal cuts in healthcare are mostly whining about how they want MORE - not less - socialism in government.

That's the extent of their concern: many believed McGuinty's Liberal fearmongering lies about Harris; yet now these folks are shocked at how McGuinty'sduplicitous Liberals have callously used the majority that was handed to them, as Vance Badawey found out.

Few seem to understand that patients ought to have a choice in not participating at all in state-run medicare.
Joy Russell's letter is among many others which have this latent stench of socialism attached to their outrage at how their government-run, single-payer monopoly failed them. Yet, then they demand more of the same failed policies!

We must resist being lulled and being co-opted by McGuinty's poisonous Liberal single-payer snake-oil.

The way to get rid of Liberal scumbag health care terrorists is to take away their single-payer monopoly; to take away their free access to your health care dollars.
*

Has anyone noticed if Liberal MP's Wayne Easter or Carolyn Bennett ever called for any investigation - public or criminal - into Dalton McGuinty's secretive health care monopoly, which killed some 500 patients from c. difficile infection?!

Easter and Bennett are oh-so-smugly outraged - but only when they can wring some political points out of their disingenuous behaviour.

The federal Liberals (when they brag about their good ole budget surpluses under the Chretien/Martin regime) say nothing of how they achieved those surpluses:

- by reconfiguring EI standards and pocketing the resultant funds (which Iggy now pretends his Liberals had nothing to do with (!!) ... well, how would Iggy know? He wasn't living in Canada!)

- by withholding transfer payments to the provinces, essentially downloading health care on to provinces.

Maybe Bennett and Easter could talk in detailed length about those little Liberal policy turds of theirs.

The St. Catharines Standard reported (Jun.23, 2009) that Iggy was in Welland on Jun.22, 2009:

"Welland psychiatrist Dr. Thoppil Abraham was one of several people in attendance who asked Ignatieff about the federal Liberals' commitment to public health. He asked Ignatieff if he would support a national health program, and the continued support of public health care."

[What soft lobs! We already have a (failing) national (and provincial!) health care program, whose tenets are broken every day, everywhere in Canada - and that is from a Liberal MP, Keith Martin, talking of health care under Liberal rule! 'Continued support' of duplicitous state-run single-payer health monopolism (which is apparently also known by the politically-correct euphemism of "public health") is our common political problem, not solution.]

The St. Catharines Standard continued:

"Ignatieff expressed his commitment to the continuation of public health care in Canada. "We have to have a publicly funded single-payer health system in Canada, period. We must never have a system where your access to health care is dependent on your wallet, ever."

I guess Iggy, having not lived in Canada for several decades, is unaware of Quebec's Supreme Court Chaoulli decision? Is Iggy that ignorant; or is Iggy pandering rhetorically to his audience, lulling them with his sweet, unrealistic lullabies of even more failed Liberal health care duplicity?

Remember when St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley and then-health minister Liberal MPP George Smitherman, the tag team of Batman and Robin, flew into a holier than thou outrage over the Life-Line screening tests that were proposed to be brought into Ontario? Remember the 'chequebook medicine' rhetoric spewed by the conveniently-outraged Liberals then?

Now we have this article in Niagara This Week, (Jun.24, 2009):

Yes, you read that right, down at the bottom: $250.00, payable by cheque or cash.

Where's the outrage from a livid Liberal Jim Bradley, in whose Liberal-under funded "public" (and supposedly "single -payer") health system this is occurring?!

Where's MPP Jim Bradley's smug outrage, when preventative breast cancer screenings are being held for cash, right in Niagara, right in Jim's backyard?

Where's Ignatieff, the Vulcan who just several days earlier was spreading his Liberal fertilizer in Niagara, babbling something about 'wallets' and 'never, ever' ?!

Where's Wayne Easter? Where's Carolyn Bennett? Why aren't they badgering for Jim Bradley to do his Batman health-care act in this instance, the way he and Smitherman did regarding Life Line?

Thermography scans are not covered by OHIP, so patients who use this diagnostic tool must pay for it. (Deductions, with certain conditions, of course, can be made off their taxes) But, arguing that this diagnostic tool can be used as a preventive and early warning tool - thereby saving lives and future health-monopoly-covered expenses - why isn't Jim Bradley's government covering this medical expense right now?

The answer is that these Liberal hypocrites have calculated they can't get any political mileage out of it.

Bradley needs to pretend his health monopoly is fine - this as his Liberals cut health care. (As in the St. Catharines Standard story "NHS mulling closing 1 of 3 maternity departments", Jun.20, 2009, where, interestingly, the words "Jim Bradley" or "Liberal" are conveniently NOT even mentioned! No comment or response in the Standard's story from the local health care monopolist and under-funder, Jim Bradley!! You can't buy that kind of press!)

Liberal Ignatieff blusters about health care, but he's full of it as well, sadly out of touch with what the Chaoulli decision was all about. No one in Welland (at least as reported by the Standard) asked Iggy about that little inconvenient twist, or about the pending McCreith/Holmes constitutional health care challenge against the Ontario Liberal government. No one pointed out to Iggy that Iggy's idol Obama wisely chose NOT to pursue Canada's failed single-payer health care model as a template for the States!

"Kevin Falcon, British Columbia's new Health Minister, believes patients should be able to use their own money to buy expedited health care in the private sector.

"I don't have any philosophical objection to it," he said candidly. "What we have to do is improve the public delivery of services."

His statement, in his first major interview since being named Health Minister on June 10, brings to the fore the issue of a two-tier Canadian health-care system.

It has been a topic for debate for years, as patients face lengthy hospital wait times and governments try to cope with surging health-care costs.

"I do not have any objection to people using their own money just as they do for dental care or sending their kids to private school," Mr. Falcon said.

"I think choice is a good thing and reducing it is not a good thing."

But Mr. Falcon said he has never gone to a private clinic and doesn't expect ever to do so in the future.

"I'd insist on being treated like anyone else. People might hear that and say, 'Yeah, right,' but I would because I wouldn't be looking for special favours and I hope none would be offered," he said.

Reminded that a former Liberal member of the provincial legislature, Barry Penner, used a private surgery centre in 2004 when he needed a back operation during a hospital employees union strike, Mr. Falcon said: "I have no problem with what he did, particularly because it was during the strike."

Mr. Penner said at the time that he would have preferred to save the money by having surgery in a public hospital, "but that was not an option."

Mr. Penner was among 7,000 British Columbians who had surgery cancelled or delayed during the strike.

The government ended up contracting out many of the procedures to private clinics as a way to catch up.

Asked how the public should reconcile his views with a current court case in which private clinics are suing the government for not allowing doctors to accept private payment from patients in private clinics, Mr. Falcon said he has not been briefed on the details.

"It's before the courts, so I have to be careful," he said.

Private clinics are seeking a declaration that legislation preventing patients from paying for expedited care in private clinics is unconstitutional and an infringement of their rights.

The clinics plan to argue that the results of the 2005 Chaoulli Supreme Court of Canada case should be applicable in B. C.

In that case, the highest court struck down Quebec's ban on private insurance for medically necessary services.

The private clinics in the B. C. case are expected to argue that citizens should be allowed to buy private health insurance to use in private clinics if their operative care is not delivered in a timely matter in the public system."
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Doesn't Michael Ignatieff believe in patient choice? Has Liberal leader Ignatieff publicly condemned the provincial government of British Columbia - a LIBERAL government!! - for its heretical anti-single-payer stand, so anti-thetical to what Iggy was glibly spouting several days ago, on Jun.22, 2009, in Welland Ont.?

Come on, Iggy!! Spout some real world response to what the Liberal government in B.C. is saying!! Where's bag of hot air Iggy on this issue, the very issue he was blabbing about here in Niagara several days ago? Talk about Liberal health care duplicity!

Jim Bradley and Caplan and McGuinty are ALL ABOUT enforcing a despotic single-payer monopoly in Ontario!

Ontario's arrogant Liberals are ALL ABOUT philosophy and dangerous anti-patient-choice ideology! Smitherman was the epitome of this disgracefully politically-retarded attitude!
Bradley's just as guilty!

B.C.'s Liberal health minister Falcon says he believes patients should be able to use their own money to buy expedited health care in the private sector - but Ontario's authoritarian Liberals refuse to acknowledge this kind of thinking. They think there is no problem with their health monopoly that a couple more draconian laws and a couple more million dollars of eHealth scandals won't fix!

These Liberal monopolists just don't get it - they just don't get that they are glorifying a flawed, unrealistic, socialist philosophy. They just don't get that their much-vaunted monopoly is a failed political construct.

Liberal monopolists such as Jim Bradley do not think, as does Falcon, that 'choice is a good thing'. Bradley believes that less choice is a good thing.

Bradley for years blabbed about all the supposed evils of Mike Harris - yet Bradley is mysteriously silent about his fellow Liberal cousins in British Columbia. I guess Bradley will try to figure out a way to smear B.C.'s Liberals the way he did Harris. Or maybe Bradley will remain silent, and maybe the local press won't bother to ask for Jim Bradley's comment on the events unfolding in B.C.: we wouldn't want Bradley to look like a political hypocrite!

Ontario's McGuinty monopolists (and Ontario Liberal MP Ignatieff as well) are inexplicably, obstinately stuck on propagating their failed single-payer ideology. It's criminal that so many Ontarians have been forced to suffer just so McGuinty's secretive, arrogant Liberals could indulge themselves with their monopolist fantasies.

Today, Jun.24, 2009, we learn that although McGuinty has made a minor cabinet shuffle, David Caplan, the health minister in charge of the eHealth fiaso, was rewarded for his Liberal health care ineptitude, not by being demoted or shuffled elsewhere, but by being allowed to stay on as health minister! Caplan should have been fired outright, along with former health minister George Smitherman, who kindly laid the eHealth turd for Caplan.

Despite McGuinty's lies, the proverbial buck stops NOWHERE, when it comes to slimebag Liberals taking responsibility for their scandals. This is another blatant example of Liberal health care duplicity.

You see, in a socialized state-run, single-payer medicare monopoly NO ONE IS HELD LIABLE, everyone is blameless; even the incompetent, moronic single-payer ideologues who monopolize our health care to our detriment.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

above: Jun.23, 2009 - looking at the north-west corner of King St. and Ninth St., in west St. Catharines, where another protest sign in a farmfield reads: "Grape Crisis. Greenbelt Ontario government disaster." A sign at the front reads: "Growers forced to dump 15,000 tons of local grapes, while wineries import 40,000 tons. For info 1-800 Ontario."

So, what's St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Greenbelt Bradley's response to these signs of protest, right in Niagara, right in the farm fields of his own riding??

Monday, June 22, 2009

above: Jun.22, 2009, looking at the north-east corner of Read Rd. and Lakeshore Rd., which is near the boundary between Niagara-On-The-Lake (represented by Liberal MPP Kim Craitor) and St. Catharines (represented by Liberal MPP Jim Bradley.)

The Greenbelt's hurting farmers. But do Liberals really bother to acknowledge this? Liberals pander to Toronto-centric urban greensheviks who think that the Greenbelt is 'good', in large part thanks to propaganda by tax-funded green-washers such as the so-called Friends of the Greenbelt (more like the friends of Liberals). The above sign comments on the sad local legacy of Jim Bradley's and Kim Craitor's green-washed Liberal socialism.

Let's hear Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley comment on this issue of their Liberal government's Greenbelt disaster, as it festers right in Niagara, right in their backyards.

Let's watch Jim 'n Kim ignore this sign of protest and discontent.

Let's watch how Jim 'n Kim downplay and slough aside the real concerns of people in their own ridings who are affected by the Liberal's greenwashed Greenbelt ideology.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

"The Liberal government “screwed up” in its handing of the eHealth program, says MPP Ted McMeekin.The minister of government and consumer services didn’t mince words in an interview, saying there were no proper regulations and controls in place to prevent consultants from abusing the system.“We really screwed up,” he said. “We needed to have better rules in place and to make sure the kinds of abuses that have been exposed” don’t happen again.Premier Dalton McGuinty, in the wake of another executive from the eHealth department resigning June 17, announced the province will no longer sole source its contracts for consulting services. There are also new rules for government and agencies, such as the LCBO, WSIB, Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation, and OLG, that will no longer pay consultants for any hospitality, incidental and food expenses. Expenses for flights, train, and car travel, and hotel rooms will be reimbursed.The new regulations are attempts by the province to prevent the expenses some consultants billed the government including one person, who was making $2,700 per day, expensing $1.65 for a tea from Tim Hortons, and $3.99 for Choco bites. There was another consultant who submitted an invoice where she said she consulted herself, and followed up with questions for herself. Even though government officials say there was a typo in the expense bill, the government still paid the consultant.“You can be ticked off when a consultant (being paid) $2,700, bills for a cup of coffee,” he said.Recently Dr. Alan Hudson, chair of eHealth resigned the position, after Mr. McGuinty days earlier had supported the doctor. He was replaced by Rita Burak, who worked for Premier Mike Harris, and who was brought in by former mayor Bob Wade to review the relationship between city staff and councillors.Sarah Kramer, eHealth’s chief executive, who received a $114,00 bonuses in March after five months on the job, and was being paid $380,000 per year, also recently resigned. She received a $317,000 severance package.In addition, the government has given $5 million in contracts to consulting firms without competitive bids, including $2 million to a company with Liberal ties.Opposition parties have called on Mr. McGuinty to fire Health Minister David Caplan over his handling of the scandal.EHealth was created in 2008 to develop electronic health records for all Ontarians by 2015.Mr. McMeekin said the public will forgive a government that acknowledges its mistakes, and takes action to make sure it doesn’t happen again.“Sometimes mistakes are made,” he said. “What (the public) doesn’t’ tolerate and shouldn’t tolerate is a government having made a mistake not prepared to own up to it.“My Mom said ‘When you mess up, fess up,’ said Mr. McMeekin. “EHealth and some of the shenanigans going on over there was a mess up and we fessed up and we are trying to fix it and move forward.”(Jun.19, 2009, Stoney Creek News)*

Yep - just fix 'er up and pretend nothin' happened! Are you FLICKING serious!?

This is yet another clear, specific example of a systemic breakdown of Ontario's state-run health monopoly - which the Liberals have been warned about, and were aware of, for several years!!

That MPP McMeekin acknowledged his Liberals screwed up is one thing - but, what has MPP Jim Bradley said? Where are the reports of Jim Bradley, the smug Liberal health care monopolist from St. Catharines, when it comes to him explaining to his constituents what his Liberals have done this time?

Jim Bradley has FLICKING disappeared!!

Jim Bradley should be held to account for the eHealth scandal - seeing that Bradley, despite being asked to, ignored calls for the implementation of greater oversight and transparency in his government's health monopoly.

When he had the chance to speak up, Bradley did nothing: Bradley is culpable of allowing the eHealth, as well as other, Liberal scandals to develop and fester, hidden in unscrutinized darkness. Bradley favoured arrogant secrecy over transparency.

Bradley's adherence to ideology over transparency is now becoming shockingly clear.

MPP McMeekin admitted there were no proper regulations and controls: yet, when I wrote to Bradley asking him to acknowledge the systemic problems in his health monopoly, and asking that he request that the ombudsman and auditor be allowed access to investigate the Liberal's health care monopoly, arrogant MPP Jim Bradley simply ignored the questions.

Bradley had the chance to make a difference, several years ago: but a smug Bradley, shamefully, chose monopolism over transparency. Bradley ignored and ran away from the concerns of his own constituents. Bradley took a chance (gambled) that his Liberal's scandalous, if not outright criminal, mismanagement of their health care obligations would never be revealed.

And now that they have...well, Good Ole Jimmy's all but disappeared. What a FLICKING outrage!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

“The head of the Canadian Medical Association is pushing for new methods of health-care financing and enforced accountability that could flip the incentives in the system.Robert Ouellet went to Europe earlier this year to find out how five countries manage to keep wait times for specialized health care to mere days.It turns out pesky patients are the key.To start, hospitals and other health institutions should be financed based on the number and type of patients they see instead of the current lump funding that creates no incentive to boost efficiency, he said.An "activities-based" funding system was adopted in England six years ago and Dr. Ouellet considers it key to a dramatic reduction in waits there."It meant that patients were seen as a source of revenue for hospitals and not an expense. Patients were sought after and not seen simply as a drain on hospital budgets," Dr. Ouellet said yesterday in a speech launching his campaign, "Time to Transform Health Care.""Here, the ideal hospital has a budget and zero patients. We have to rethink the way it works. Why can't the concept of customer service become part of Canadian health care?"Dr. Ouellet toured Denmark, Belgium, France, England and the Netherlands earlier this year. He said European health-care leaders were stunned to hear unattained Canadian wait-list goals were far longer than their upper limits.Dr. Ouellet and a coalition of medical specialists working under the CMA unveiled a report on Canadian wait times yesterday, reporting only spotty progress in five key areas targeted for wait reductions.The provinces and Ottawa targeted waits for hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, radiation oncology, cardiac care and diagnostic scans under a 2004 agreement.Five-and-a-half billion dollars later, "there remains a lot of unfinished business for wait times in Canada," said Lorne Bellan, co-chair of the Wait Times Alliance. Not only are wait lists still long, several provinces have lagged in proper reporting and disclosure.British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario have shown the most progress, both in tracking and making modest gains cutting wait times.Waiting lists in specialties outside the five high-profile, priority areas remain stubbornly high, the report said, particularly in psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, gastroenterology, plastic surgery, anesthesiology and emergency care."We had hoped [the five priorities] would be a starting point," Dr. Bellan said. "There are significant waits well beyond the original five areas and they all need to be addressed in order to provide quality care for Canadians."Dr. Ouellet said close tracking has boosted accountability in Europe, where hospital directors can be fired for poor performance.The European countries on Dr. Ouellet's tour generally use more private medicine than the Canadian system. But Dr. Ouellet insisted he's not pushing for a turn toward U.S.-style private medicine, with its spiralling costs and gaps in coverage that leave 46 million Americans without insurance."The U.S. is a very poor performer," Dr. Ouellet said. "Why look to a system that ranks below ours for lessons?"

***

How Canada measures up

The head of the Canadian Medical Association recently completed a fact-finding trip to five European countries, where he found negligible waiting lists for most medical procedures. Here are some comparisons with Canada:France is in the midst of an MRI crisis because people are waiting an average of 35 days for a scan. In Manitoba - one of the best-performing provinces with reliable, published data - the average wait is 70 days. In Ontario, the average wait is 105 days.The average wait for orthopedic surgery in Ontario is 26 weeks. In England, the average wait for orthopedic treatment is 12 weeks. This is one of the slowest-performing specialties in the English National Health System.In England, 93 per cent of all specialized treatments begin within 18 weeks of the first doctor's visit. In Canada, 50 to 91 per cent of Canadians blow past the 18-week marker while waiting for specialized treatment.Ophthalmology is the worst performer in Canada, with 91 per cent of patients waiting more than 18 weeks (The average wait is 450 days). Gastroenterology is the best-performing specialty. About half of patients are treated within 18 weeks.”

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I wonder which politician will listen to, and endorse, the further serious contemplation and measured eventual implementation, of Dr. Ouellet’s sensible proposals? Which politician will acknowledge that health care really does need serious, anti-nanny-state reform in Ontario? And which hyperbolic politician will fearmonger and bluster that this would lead to the collapse of mankind as we know it...?

St. Catharines Liberal MPP (and smug health care monopolist) Jim Bradley has shown he thinks only his Liberals have the divine right to monopolize health care delivery in Ontario; Bradley most likely would be the first to start sanctimoniously bleating as soon as the word privatization is mentioned. But, examining Dr. Ouellet's ideas, we see that he's talking about a reasonable hybrid system; the kind of system, by the way, that smug, chest-pounding nationalist Liberals and status-quo-change-fearing protectionist socialists have been obstructing for years.

Will our local MPP, and cabinet minister, Jim Bradley (who once strangely/smugly claimed he hated doctors!?) bother to comment on Dr.Ouellet’s ideas and proposals? Let’s ask Bradley for a response! Is adhering to their failed health care monopolism enough justification for Bradley's Liberals to force Ontario patients to wait 26 weeks for orthopedic surgery, or 105 days for an MRI? Come on!!

Bradley more likely will run and hide from comment, preferring to rather baffle us with his windy populist rhetoric and tired old proletarian good-ole-boy shtick… “blah…bla…Tommy Douglas…blah blah…slippery slope…blah..bla…siphon from one system to another….blah bla blah… so: vote Liberal!”

Below: June 9, 2009 - looking east along the southside of Ferry St. towards Fallsview Blvd., in Niagara Falls Ont.

Above: same view, Jun.19, 2009; the old stuccoed-frame house has been demolished.

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Below: Jun.10, 2009 - looking at the south-west corner of Fallsview Blvd. and Ferry St. in Niagara Falls, Ont.; a vacant former restaurant stands on the corner, with the old, cream-coloured stucco house seen at the right.

above: same view, old house at right was demolished on Jun.19, 2009.*

below: Jun.10, 2009; closer view of house. It stood just east of the famous Capri Restaurant, a bit of which is seen at the far right.

Above: Jun.19, 2009 - same view, after house demolished.

*

Below: Jun.10, 2009 - looking at the site from the north-west. The Skylon is in the distance.

Friday, June 19, 2009

The St. Catharines Standard reported (in "Funding OK'd for extra paramedics", Jun.19, 2009) that Niagara Region will be paying to cover the additional expenses expected by the EMS in delivering patients to hospitals further away, now that the Liberals have forced the closure of two hospital ER's in Niagara.

Local taxpayers should not be responsible for funding failed Liberal health-care monopoly policies. Where did the billions of dollars from McGuinty's Liberal Health Tax go?

This is surreptitious downloading by the McGuinty-ites: typical Liberal health care duplicity.

Of course, we're just now finding out about the latest fiasco occurring surreptitiously in McGuinty's Liberal health care monopoly, with the ongoing eHealth scandal, where Liberal-friendly cronies and insiders were given millions of dollars of untendered contracts.

Wouldn't that money have helped Niagara 's EMS problem - a problem created by the Liberal-forced HIP plan? Wouldn't that money have helped patients, such as the Feors, who are suffering and trapped, without choice or recourse, on Liberal health care waiting lists?

The St. Catharines Standard (Jun.18, 2009) revealed in "McGuinty changes rules on consulting contracts" that former Liberal health minister George Smitherman had also given over a million dollars in untendered contracts to the same firm involved in the current eHealth scandal. This is the same slithery Smitherman who was claiming last year that hospitals were spending like drunken sailors; the same slimy Grit who -while enforcing a despotic single-payer, anti-patient-choice health monopoly - was also forcing LHIN's into unreasonable budget cuts.

St. Catharines Liberal health care monopolist MPP Jim Bradley ignorantly refused to call for any investigation into why the hospital in his own city of St. Catharines was found in 2007 to have the third-highest patient death rate in Canada. Bradley couldn't be bothered then, and still hasn't yet, given a public explanation for why this occurred on his watch. What, and why, was Jim Bradley hiding?

Well, we saw that, when further Liberal health scandals were revealed:

Jim Bradley refused to call in the ombudsman to investigate the deaths of hundreds of patients from C.dif infection, patients who were stuck in the Liberal's state-run, no-patient-choice health monopoly.

Jim Bradley refused to answer my letters asking him to explain why patients were dying in his Liberal-controlled and Liberal-underfunded state-monopoly.

Jim Bradley refused to call for any independent scrutiny into his government's health monopoly.

Jim Bradley refused to call for any independent oversight into his Liberal health care monopoly.

Jim Bradley refused to answer my questions about Ontario auditor Jim McCarter's previous reports, which lambasted the Liberal's serious health-care problems, and which all but predicted the current problems and scandals we're seeing.

A secretive Jim Bradley refused to discuss these matters, even while (unknown to the public at the time) his Liberals were already starting to implement their cosy eHealth scheme with their cronies!

Jim Bradley essentially ignored and refused to acknowledge the mounting evidence and concerns regarding the accumulating failures of his Liberal government's ideolgical and authoritarian health monopoly.

Jim Bradley refused to acknowledge or discuss his Liberal government's health policy failures, and Bradley, when he had the chance, refused to publicly call for transparency and oversight into his Liberal government's fiasco of a health monopoly - and notably, Bradley was playing the arrogant Liberal while his Liberals were forcing LHIN's across the province, including Niagara's, to cut back their budgets.

It is almost criminal that Liberals can get away with such unaccountable manipulation of their obligations, singing paeans to Tommy Douglas on one hand, while cutting and downloading health services and budgets on the other - and, all this while the Liberals astoundingly continue to perpetuate a false, duplicitous premise, a political deception, that single-payer medicare works!These scandals just keep on coming, yet Smitherman wasn't fired; and Caplan wasn't either.

Liberals such as Jim Bradley, Dalton McGuinty, George Smitherman, and David Caplan, should be subject to criminal investigation into how their actions and policies - by enforcing an unreasonable health-care monopoly, devoid of oversight - have harmed, both physically and financially, patients in the province of Ontario. These Liberals should not be held harmless from the damage they are causing.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

"My husband was scheduled for bladder cancer surgery at St. Catharines General Hospital on June 9. His doctor has operating room privileges only one day per month, and he waited three months for the date.

One hour before his operation, he was told that his surgery was cancelled due to a bed shortage, and has now been rescheduled to August. The Niagara Health System has just closed 16 beds. I'm sure my husband isn't the only one this has happened to, and he won't be the last.

My concern is for his quality of life while waiting for the surgery. My concern is, how long does it take for untreated cancer to spread?

They say that early detection means early cure. What is the point of knowing you have treatable cancer, only to find out that you have to wait for months for lifesaving surgery, just because NHS has decided to close more hospital beds?

Must we wait for the new hospital to be built? Will the new hospital eliminate cancellations from happening? Probably not. Is it the building or administration?"

Let's get it clear that reason why the NHS closed beds was because McGuinty's Liberals directed them to do so!! Jim Bradley's dirty, duplicitous Liberal ideology is all over this situation.
Just several days earlier, on Jun.12, 2009, the St. Catharines Standard carried another story "EMS requires budget hike: report", wherein writer Matthew Van Dongen reported:

"The cash-strapped Niagara Health System decided late last year to convert hospitals in Port Colborne and Fort Erie to urgent care centres as part of its hospital improvement plan, despite vocal local opposition."

(Turns out that Niagara's EMS ambulance services are asking for another $3 million, in order to get patients to the remaining Niagara emergency wards - and this might have to come out of the regional coffers! Talk about how health care monopolists stealthily download health care costs! Don't tell Michael Moore how sicko and duplicitous single-payer health care is!)

Did Van Dongen bother to explain why the NHS is "cash-strapped"?
Did Van Dongen - or his editors - bother to ask how it is, that a health-care monopoly - controlled by Ontario's single-payer-pushing Liberals - can possibly be "cash strapped"??!!
How can that even happen?!
Did the Standard reporter bother to go to the source of the problem - to local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, whose government (unfortunately, for patients) is solely responsible for health care in the province, for a comment on the issue?

Did the reporter examine Liberal Bradley's long-running role in the issue of health care funding within an ideologically-motivated monopoly setting, which is controlled and funded by Ontario's Liberal majority government?
How can a "cash-strapped" hospital system exist under such tightly regulated circumstances? Aren't the Liberals the sole payers in their monopoly?

Why - surprise, surprise, there's no mention at all in this article of Good Ole Jimmy, or any other Ontario Liberal, for that matter!

No analysis of Dalton McGuinty's authoritarian Liberal policies which led to this "cash-strapped" health monopoly in the first place: no historical perspective provided, no list of questions - NOTHING whatsoever from the local press!!

It's as if Jim Bradley, miracle of miracles, had nothing at all to do with any of this!!
It's as if someone else - not the Liberals - is responsible for the underfunding!!
Van Dongen just doesn't dig deeper and give the sordid backstory on the issue.
Suddenly, just like that, the NHS becomes "cash strapped" - - - all on its own!!
Yet, the fact that Ontario patients are banned by despotic Liberal law from arranging their own private health coverage (while Bradley's scumbag Liberal hypocrites fail to fund their own health care obligations) is somehow irrelevant, and beneath politically-correct discussion!!!!

Why bother questioning the local Liberal MPP, Jim Bradley - who is responsible for the health system BEING "cash-strapped"; whois responsible for the cancer surgery delays thrust upon the Feors!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Now that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal scumbag health-care monopolists have had the lid lifted on their eHealth scam, let's quickly look at this article, which appeared just a year ago, last June, in 2008, and then put it in perspective with today's eHealth scandal:

"The province's refusal to allow more independent oversight of its hospitals in the wake of concerns over C. difficile has given Ontario a black eye, provincial Ombudsman Andre Marin said Friday.

It's embarrassing that Ontario is "perpetuating the status quo" when it is the only province in Canada whose ombudsman doesn't have the power to oversee hospitals, he said.

"There's been a very powerful hospital lobby that's been calling the shots over this one, and I think members of the public are infuriated -- and rightly so -- that Ontario is not providing its citizens the scrutiny of a sector of the province which gobbles up $18 billion of revenue," Marin said.

"I mean, it's an incredibly large amount of money, and there are no checks and balances."

Marin investigated complaints about a hospital in January, but only after the government took over control of the facility by appointing a supervisor. He said his office has complained about the problem for decades, only to have the government turn a deaf ear.

"Every year we get hundreds of complaints from people and we're helpless, we cannot do anything about it," he said.

"Nor is there any other body that can investigate independently and make recommendations to fix the problem. So we're at the mercy of hospitals. We write them an $18-billion cheque, no questions asked."

For weeks, opposition parties have been accusing the government of covering up the extent of a C. difficile outbreak in Ontario hospitals and have repeatedly demanded more independent oversight of the province's hospitals.

NDP critic Cheri DiNovo renewed her calls for ombudsman oversight Friday after revealing that her 87-year-old uncle Joseph died in April after contracting the potentially deadly bacteria at a Toronto hospital.

The "phenomenal" man and retired sheet metal worker who was the "life of every party" had lived independently until he was hospitalized due to a urinary tract infection, DiNovo said.

"This is not the way anyone's life should end," she said.

Linda Del Grande, DiNovo's cousin who cared for her father during his five months in hospital, said it was difficult to obtain information about the infection from hospital staff.

"One of my frustrations is that we seem to be groping in the dark about this infection," she said.

"I still feel very much in the dark having talked to nurses and doctors and other health-care providers during all that time. I feel frustrated and confused about how serious this infection is."

C. difficile is believed to be responsible for 260 deaths in seven Ontario hospitals, including 62 at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington.

The Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats claim those deaths could have been prevented if the province had acted more quickly after the infection claimed 2,000 lives in Quebec in 2003.

Health Minister George Smitherman recently ordered all hospitals to start reporting cases of C. difficile starting Sept. 30, the first of many types of infectious diseases that hospitals will be required to report to the public over the next year. "

*

We can now see that Dalton McGuinty and his scumbag arrogant Liberal MPP's, such as Jim Bradley, were already hiding the eHealth scandal! The Liberals DID NOT want to risk having the ombudsman, or anyone else, examining the murky layers of the Liberal's unaccountable health care monopoly. It's clear, even a year ago, in June 2008, that the Liberals didn't want anyone looking into their health-care monopoly's methods of operation, and how these methods related to the veracity of the Liberal's political claims about their health monopoly's performance. If Dalton McGuinty's s secretive Liberal government had allowed ombudsman scrutiny even a year ago, then the current eHealth scandal now unfolding in June 2009, could have most certainly been brought to light much earlier, if not prevented altogether.

We were then - as we still are now - just supposed to trust Dalton and his Liberal scumbags, who continually pretend that there is nothing wrong with their monopoly health system!

The article above dealt with what was the issue in the summer of 2008: the Liberal's cover-up and refusal to allow independent scrutiny of their health care monopoly's hospitals, which we learned had killed hundreds of patients due to C.dif infections.

The ombudsman stated back in June 2008 (and we've known years earlier!) that although the Liberals spend billions of taxpayer dollars just on health care, "there are no checks and balances" in McGuinty's state-run health system. Arrogant Liberal MPP Jim Bradley ignored my requests that his Liberals allow the ombudsman access to scrutinize their health monopoly. Jim Bradley acted as an arrogant, ideological obstructionist, denying a process of transparency and independent scrutiny. Jim Bradley, typical dirtbag Liberal, refused to answer any questions related to his Liberal's atrocious handling of their health care obligations. The concepts of accountability, responsibility and independently-accessed oversight didn't, and still don't, penetrate the ideological blinders worn by arrogant monopolists such as Liberal MPP Jim Bradley.

Now, we have the Liberals tied in with all kinds of Liberal-friendly insiders - former Liberal staffers, or Liberal fundraisers - who are involved in this eHealth untendered-contracts-scam, yet good ole McGuinty still doesn't think that any impropriety has taken place in his secretive health monopoly! We see that an untendered contract was also given by the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities to the same Liberal-friendly consulting firm which is involved in the Health Ministry scandal, as Tanya Talaga wrote in "Consultant at eHealth was given more work", (Toronto Star, Jun.13, 2009):

"A consultancy group that received nearly $2 million in untendered contracts from eHealth Ontario was awarded another $435,000 in provincial work last year without having to compete for the deal, the Toronto Star has learned.

Courtyard Group received an untendered contract from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities worth $435,000 for 2,000 hours of work last September, government officials say.

Courtyard was assessing capital needs of colleges and universities prior to the $1.3 billion infrastructure funding announcement made in late May by the provincial and federal governments.

"We don't have that capacity in the ministry. That has been one of the weaknesses we have," the minister, John Milloy, told the Star in an interview yesterday.

"I will be very candid in saying I was surprised at the limited capacity when I became minister in dealing with capital requests."

Courtyard is an international consultancy whose Toronto office has strong ties to the Liberal government. Documents obtained by the Star show Courtyard's John Ronson, a co-chair of the 1995 Liberal election campaign, billed eHealth on March 18 and 19 for consulting on "risk management" and "governance" issues at $393 an hour for a total of $1,572 for four hours' work.
Ronson led the team on the universities contract, Milloy said.

Karli Farrow, a former policy adviser to Premier Dalton McGuinty and chief of staff to former Health Minister George Smitherman, was paid $10,646 for 32.5 hours of eHealth work as a Courtyard Group consultant in January. She left Smitherman's office in 2007.

EHealth Ontario has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks for doling out untendered contracts and hiring expensive consultants.

Milloy said Courtyard was chosen for its reputation, not because of its Liberal ties. "They are a proven player in the field," he said.

"Courtyard ... had done a lot of the same type of work in the hospital sector. John Ronson led the team," Milloy said. "We certainly got feedback from the university sector that he was very good at this type of analysis."

Government procurement rules allow sole-source contracts in urgent situations and this was a rush job to meet the provincial budget deadline, Milloy said."
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So where else is this cosy Liberal-friendly scam occurring? McGuinty now wants auditor Jim McCarter to look into this scam- at eHealth only. But, again, why wasn't McCarter allowed permanent access and oversight into the Liberal's health monopoly, in the first place, several years ago, when I had brought up this very concern to ignorant Liberal MPP Jim Bradley? The answer is that Liberals don't want any potentially-embarrassing investigations which they can't first control and manipulate. Bradley or McGuinty could have cared less when McCarter wrote about systemic problems in the Liberal's health system several years ago. (see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/03/state-run-monopoly-health-care-should.html)

McGuinty's Liberals at the time simply ignored auditor McCarter's concerns!! Now - as they have with the ombudsman - the Liberals have asked the auditor's office to look into only a small part of the health-care mess which they are now juggling, hoping no-one finds out about what they're doing behind all the other closed (yet publicly-funded) health-care doors.

Problem is, like before, McGuinty and his slimebag Grits are just delaying and putting up a smokescreen with their limited investigation, which they'll ignore like they did their previous phony 'investigations' - because the Liberals aren't compelled to follow or implement anything which the ombudsman or the auditor might recommend.

Borys Sydoruk of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote in "Ukrainian famine not 'alleged' ", (National Post, Jun.16, 2009):

"Re: Harper's Risky Foreign Habits, May 15.

By deploying the word "alleged" when referring to the genocidal nature of the Great Famine in Soviet Ukraine, this article displays partisanship. Since Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term "genocide," felt that the famine was genocidal, who cares what the ex-KGB men of the Kremlin think? Kudos to the government of Canada for standing on the side of truth despite the bleatings of the perpetrators' descendants."

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Can you imagine the uproar if one were to say the nazi Holocaust was "alleged"? Or that Poland started WWII, because they didn't, well, "accommodate/acquiesce to" Hitler's plans?! When is Canada going to start deporting all the KGB, Cheka, GPU, Smersh and NKVD - ist Kremlinites who may still be enjoying their stay in Canada? Those still lusting for the good ole days of Soviet imperialist terrorism, still denying the Holodomor, even now, in 2009, should be nominated for the New York Times ignoble Walter DurantyWIGUS (willfully ignorant/utterly stupid) Hall of Shame.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Michael Ignatieff urged Liberals to rebuild the party from the ground up yesterday, but wouldn't rule out unilaterally appointing individual candidates, a practice some call undemocratic.

The leader, who will be officially crowned tomorrow, had little choice but to state his stance after former prime minister John Turner threw down the gauntlet at the party's national convention.

Turner said the party, which had shrunk to an emaciated shell of its former self before Ignatieff took over in December, "will not be rebuilt from the top down. It has to be rebuilt from the bottom up."

"I don't want to see any leader-appointed candidates across the country," Turner told a meeting of riding association presidents.

Ignatieff, who has focused the Liberals' biennial convention on rebuilding the party organization at the level of individual ridings, said he didn't agree.

"I believe very strongly and I've said since I became leader, I want to open nominations in every (riding) in the country, I want to rebuild the party from the grassroots up.

"But I cannot abandon the prerogative of a leader to make those appointments that I deem necessary," Ignatieff said, adding he planned to use the power only "rarely."

Normally, potential candidates compete for their party's nomination in a riding; the victor squares off against other parties in a federal election.

But leaders have sometimes circumvented this grassroots exercise in democracy by appointing "star" candidates or members of minorities.

For instance, Liberal Ken Dryden was an appointed candidate, as were former leader Stephane Dion and John McCallum. The power has also been used to appoint female candidates.

Nicole Foster Woollatt, president of the National Women's Liberal Commission, said while the leader should make unilateral appointments only "sparingly," he should keep that power.

"It's not something you want to use frequently. But it can be important."

Ignatieff was also challenged yesterday on when the party will put forward more specific policy ideas.

He told reporters one big priority will be employment insurance reform, with specific proposals for a "national standard" coming soon.

As for Dion, the Liberals plan a tribute to him this evening, with speeches by former prime ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. Dion still faces a hefty tab of about $150,000 for his own Liberal leadership campaign back in 2006.

A fundraising cocktail bash also will be held for him to help retire that debt. Only four of the original 11 leadership contestants from that race have completely paid their debts. "

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Iggy's tired old professorial "'x' if necessary, but not necessarily 'x'" routine is hilarious in its vague shiftiness, like when he used it back in Dec. 2008, describing his support for StephaneBumbledore Dion's cobble-ition with the separatists as "Coalition if necessary, but not necessarily coalition". Now, when it comes to parachuting "star" Liberal candidates into easy ridings, vs. following a grassroots approach, well, once again, Iggy's views are as clear as Liberal mud.
Iggy says he believes in the grassroots approach; which is to say, he does - well, might - believe this, insofar as he's also inclined to believe in the Red Star Chamber-appointed approach!
Of course, the article above fails to mention that Iggy himself was parachuted into the Etobicoke South riding in 2005, mysteriously shutting out other nominated grassroot candidates in that riding...
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/michael-ignatieff-cannot-speak-to.html ;

When asked about how he became a candidate, Iggy coyly said then: "I cannot speak to the process by which the party designated me as a candidate."

Now that he has been acclaimed not only as a candidate, but also acclaimed as Liberal party leader, a prevaricating Iggy still 'can't speak to the process which designates' certain Liberal candidates over others.

So Ontario Health Minister David Caplan has fired eHealth boss Sarah Kramer (with a $300,000+ going-away package!) over untendered contract spending by her agency worth millions of tax dollars. But Caplan’s Liberal ass should also be booted out of office. And, this eHealth scam has been going on for some time now; this little turd was left over from George Smitherman's slithery tenure as former health minister. What's Smitherman got to say about it?Remember how loathe McGuinty's secretive Liberals were to avoid and prevent any scrutiny of what they were doing over in the Health ministry? What, pray tell, did the Liberals have to hide? Smitherman was shuffled out of the health ministry, but the stench he left behind still lingers.

Remember how self-righteous and on-cue-disdainful ole’ federalista Liberal Iggy Ignatieff gets over files which are left by minister’s aides: the minister should resign! The minister should be fired! Outrage! Blah..bla… When the federal deficit rises, Iggy goes ballistic: the minister should be fired!! The minister should resign!!

Blahh…blah..blaaah…but when provincial Grit Finance minister Dwight Duncan announced his own Ontario Liberals will also have their deficit unexpectedly increase by billions of dollars – no one gave a flicking shit! Ole Iggy didn’t pounce on Ole Dunko to resign! Iggy wants even MORE "stimulus" spending, more taxes, more debt! Remember how in opposition Liberal MPP Jim Bradley huffed and blustered, along with his friends in the press, about how Mike Harris was evil incarnate whenever some unionist at the hospital sneezed or had a gripe, which Bradley would turn into a holier-than-thou rant beyond all smugness? Yeah, Ole Jimmy’s Liberals have decidedly proven themselves to be far worse than any accusation that Bradley ever threw at Harris.

T. Marciniec wrote in "Our local rep is silent through the turmoil", (St. Catharines Standard, Jun.9, 2009):

"Premier Dalton McGuinty promised no tax increases -- then came the health tax. Now we await the HST as a further tax grab during this recession! When this tax is introduced, we have been promised tax breaks. Tax breaks for us with auto sector bailout debt? We wait with baited breath. Ontario sold surplus hydro power to factories and the United States at a reduced rate. Residential power users aren't getting any reduced rates. Instead, we pay a debt reduction charge on each of our hydro bills because of poor administration when the government owned Ontario Hydro.

The Smart Meter was introduced as a pretense of saving power and costs. We are supposed to believe this. The government mandated we must have the Smart Meter, but it can't mandate reducing our hydro rates when there is a surplus!

A version of eHealth existed, was disbanded and has again come to life. Some of the same people in the new eHealth were in the old version, and again allegations of over-paid executives and consultants and contract controversy are rampant, as before. Is this where our health tax is going to?

All this, and silence from St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley."

Certainly, Good Ole Jim Bradley ignored my previous letters, asking him to call in the ombudsman , and the auditor, for independent access to investigate his Liberal-run health monopoly. We now see that cabinet minister Jim Bradley had something to hide, and that Bradley is culpable of helping cover up for his Liberal health monopoly's failures - for years. Turn a blind eye, and refuse to answer questions: with a credo like that, and a fawning local press, why, no wonder Jimmy's been around since the Bee Gee's were still cranking out hits.

You see, when McGuinty’s Liberal health-care monopolists spend untendered millions of tax dollars in their state-run no-choice health-scare prison, you should simply trust ole Slicker McGinny and his co-conspirators when he says, as he inevitably will – WE’RE ONLY DOING THIS IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS, Folks!! Lookit, we’re spending your money because, well, let's face it... you can't be trusted to spend it yourselves. We Liberals know what's best for you, and so, Caplan is staying; Kramer is going.

Seriously – Caplan says he’s firing Kramer to “restore public confidence” in the eHealth agency – but really, public confidence would be better served if Caplan himself resigned. Who’s asking this question: “Mr. McGuinty, in order to restore public confidence in the publicly-funded health-monopoly which your ideological Liberal government imposes upon Ontarians, will you demand the resignation of the health minister responsible for this agency - David Caplan?”

Who’s asking how is it that Ontario Liberals are handing out such large amounts of tax cash without proper tender? Is this same cosy Liberal scam occurring in other parts of Caplan’s health ministry, or, for that matter, in other Liberal ministries? How can the public trust these Grits with their e-Stealth secrecy? Please note that Liberal Jim Bradley, when he had the chance to, over several years, refused to answer my letters asking him to call for increased transparency and independent oversight within his Liberal-run health monopoly - this as his government's eHealth scandal was, unknown to the public, unfolding. Shameful.

Incompetent, secretive Liberals – always hiding from accountability and scrutiny. Preventing and avoiding oversight by the Ombudsman, paying little attention to anything the provincial auditor might say; just fire the lackey; have the Grit politicians cover up the problem, and downplay it as no big deal. This Ontario Liberal-run health ministry is out of bloody control, and McGuinty’s Liberal stormtrooper monopolists will not even allow patients the choice to by-pass McGuinty’s state-made monopolist disaster, oh glory be thine, Tommy Douglas. You pay more, you get less; and when we find out the scams that are going on under the Liberal’s long, protruding noses, they just say ‘Hey: Trust us…everything’s OK’!!

Caplan’s ministry – as McGuinty himself has said – spends HALF of Ontario’s entire budget – and no one really has any oversight into what the flick these monopolists are up to. When hundreds die of c.dif infections in Dalton McGuinty’s hospitals - no criminal investigation is held. When St. Catharines is home to the hospital with the third highest patient mortality rate in Canada, local Liberal strongman Jim Bradley says NOTHING. No investigations held; no public explanations given, either by the Niagara Health System, by Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, by George Smitherman, David Caplan, or by McGuinty himself.

JUST DON'T ASK THESE LIBERAL FLICKERS ANY QUESTIONS, OK? As patients and taxpayers, be grateful for what they throw your way.

We saw newspaper reports on Jun 9, 2009, again, cancer wait times have not improved under McGuinty's tenure.

But what is the sexy issue that the press and pundits are chortling about? Why, it's about Lisa Raitt supposedly somehow disparaging cancer patients with remarks she made 5 months ago!!

And almost every press report insinuates that somehow Raitt said something evil about cancer patients, or the isotope issue, when categorically her comments were not about cancer patients at all. And as we've seen - this non-issue, mountain-out-of-a-molehill became sexy - because the press was attracted to it, gushing over some fictitious appearance of impropriety, yet ignoring the boring substance. CTV news (Jun.10, 2009) blustered about "outraged cancer patients" and how Raitt was somehow "advancing her political career". Liberal Carolyn Bennett babbled on about how Raitt was "absolutely incompetent and irresponsible" ('Really, Carolyn', someone should say, 'you're full of it yourself. Get flicking real, Madam. Your own pandering response was nauseatingly pathetic, almost as theatrical as Iggy's regular feigned outrages. Tiresome Liberal tripe.) Then there were letter writers, such as Deborah Kelly, or Sondra Rutman, or Walter Tedman, or V.Lauren, in the Jun.10, 2009 National Post, who seemingly also did not actually read or understand the context of Raitt's words - but were sufficiently somehow offended enough to write about their imagined slight. Truly unreal!

Now this morning (Jun.10, 2009), Raitt apologized for her comments (why?!) but that again isn't enough for some people. We all remember (or is the Liberal sycophant press doing its best to make us forget?) how Dalton McGuinty (smugly campaigning in ahospital lobby - yeah: talk about political ambitions!) simply walked away from a cancer patient during the last election, after the patient told McGuinty that his Liberals were not doing enough for patients.

Remember that, folks? Dirt bag McGuinty, the leader of this Ontario Flicking Liberal party, walks away from the man, essentially making out the patient to be a liar. Some quack hack with McGuinty even went so far as to insinuate that the patient might be depressed, making his opinion unworthy of McGuinty's time. (see also http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/09/youre-not-helping-me-angry-cancer.html)

No one cared about that, did they? Where was health-care monopolist Carolyn Bennett and her bag of Grit rhetoric then, as a Liberal was actually being irresponsible, when faced with an actual cancer patient?

We don't really concern ourselves too much when a Liberal leader walks away from a cancer patient who questions his duplicitous policies; or when hundreds die of c.dif in the Liberal health monopoly, and no independent investigation is held; or when the St. Catharines hospital is found to have the third highest death rate in Canada, yet Liberal Jim Bradley, to this day, refuses to provide an official explanation; or when wait times continue to increase, while Liberal buffoons mismanage our outrageous taxes.

But somehow with Raitt, the Liberals and their hangers-on have found a new scapegoat, a convenient red-herring to divert our attention from the criminal Liberal incompetence actually taking place in Dalton McGuinty's health-care monopoly, right now, as we speak.